Former NOVA instructor here -- I've long since returned to the U.S. and a former colleague in Japan has my letter. Two questions: 1) Am I entitled to money, having left the country? and 2) Is there anything official about these forms that has to be done directly on them, or can I get them sent to me as a PDF so I can get them back to NOVA in time?

Gregg
1) I expect that if someone owes you money the slate is not wiped clean if you die let alone change countries. The forms have a section where you enter the details of your overseas bank account.
2) I expect your friend could scan and send the form to you or fax it. But probably the returned form would need your signature. I would sign and return by post a hard copy of the one copied to you and mention that the original copy will follow. Have your friend mail you the original to sign and return just in case.

someone translate this shit for me. ive been in japan too long to understand complicated words like transfer.
the amount shown on the bank form we got, e.g. Y91,000 is the first repayment due on december 16th.
this is 20% of what we are owed.
didnt we get 80% ages back? like 2008 around march/april?
yet there be talk of a second repayment... "this amount will be the base for the second proportional repayment".
80 + 20 normally equals around about 100 right? so whats this second repayment?
and whats the monster number on the bank form above the december 16th payment figure? e.g. Y450,000

the subsequent payments (that might not come anyway) are for the severance pay that nova was required to pay (3 months) and for the REAL 20% of what we were owed.

you gotta read carefully, but this payment is for the remainder that we didn't receive. it's been a while, but if you remember, we were paid 60% of 80% that was owed to us. This is the 20% to give us the full 80% of what we were owed (and the government said they would cover).

so we are still owed 20% to make a full salary payment, plus the possibility of a severance package.

Please explain how the Union made this happen. As I understand, this is something that the trustees are obligated to do for the former employees with or without the union's involvement.

As far as I know, these notices have only been sent out to the former instructors of the Bankrupt Company Nova Corporation, but does anyone know, how about former staff? Some of you may be thinking "I don't care" or "Screw 'em" but they have just as much right to receive their portions of the unpaid wages as instructors.

The notice isn't written very well and is hard to understand.. but heres my interpetation..

We are getting 20% of the claim we have against Nova... (450,000 x .20 = 90000 yen).... We however may get more later (not likely)... My only explanation for this is... the 80% we got from the government doesnt absolve the legal claim we have against NOVA??

Thats my guess.. which I think is better than what most of you knuckleheads are just making up.

What the Nova Bankruptcy Trustees are telling you is that there is a relatively small pot of mney left over from the Nova Bankruptcy. If you are former employees who didn't get paid, you are unpaid creditors of Nova, and some money is available to you.

If you want to pursue your claim with Nova, you need to contact the Trustees and tell them where to send any of (whatever) money is left for you. Plus tell your ex-Nova friends the same, if they don't know.

Whoever sent the letter obviously included some number that the trustees feel is owed to the person who got the letter. This amount looks to be 20% of some number that you were owed at the end of Nova. This is what the trustees are promising to pay now, if you give them the right bank information.

As the trustees try to sell off more of whatever assets were left of Nova, they will try to create another small pile of money, and give you as much of whatever else you were supposed to get. That sounds like whatever part of your normal pay you didn't get, plus a severance of 3 months. Since you are ranked higher than a "general creditor", this is why you would get this. But by my reading, none of that is guaranteed. So however big the second pile is, you just get your fraction. If the pile of cash in only big enough to pay 4% of the number, (say three months was 600,000 yen), you only get 4% of the number (which would be 24,000 yen).

I have a feeling that that second payment is going to be something like that. They are telling you they have no money to pay "general creditors" (vendors and former customers), and your priority as an ex-employee creditor is just a little higher than that, which means you get a slice of whatever they get selling off the non-cash assets.

If you don't ask for whatever money they want to send you, you won't get it.

I never received any money from NOVA at all, I am now back in Japan and would like to claim some of it, is there a deadline, does anyone know if I am still entitled to my back pay? I worked right up until the bitter end. Any advice about how to go about getting the money would be very, very appreciated.

I would send all your info to the receivers and then send all of your money to Cambridge so you can do your CELTA course. If you had done that to begin with you would not have had to work for Nova and you would not be in this situation. As said before if you want a career in teaching English then CELTA is a good first step.

No it isn't! In Japan having non Japanese features a mouth that has the ability to spew out English in native like fashion and also the ability to ask up to 1 million inane robotic like questions in order to force the Japanese Student to utter a single word response. then after that you need the skill of clapping a smiling while shouting sugoi!sugoi! For their token grunt or yes no response.
That's all you need here in the land of the rising sun!

Hi guys. First, sorry for my terrible writing in advance as I'm writing this from my phone.
I'm interested to know how they came up with our proportional payment. I also received my documentation yesterday and was quite pleased. I emailed a few mates to see what they got and they had received a similar figure to me. Our payments came to around 150,000 yen each. I then emails some other friends, only to learn that their payments were up to quadruple our own. One guy receiving well over 400,000. Now I recall getting our initial payments and these same guys also existed more then me then, yet we worked the same amount of time. How is it they are offered so much while we have been offered such a comparatively small sum? Appreciate any input

10 years of studying English and the Japanese still can't sting a basic sentence together. Then it is left to all the eikaiwa teachers to try and fix the mess the high school system created. In the process many English teachers go nuts because they end up conforming to the passive aproach that has got the Japanese to where they are with English today. 90% of Japanese don't even regard English as important to the future success of Japan in a global community. It's just plaything, just like the teachers.
It's time to change Japan.

I would send all your info to the receivers and then send all of your money to Cambridge so you can do your CELTA course. If you had done that to begin with you would not have had to work for Nova and you would not be in this situation. As said before if you want a career in teaching English then CELTA is a good first step.

It's the CELTA troll! You must be having a right old laugh at whoever is posting comments about you on the GEOS NA forum, assuming that it isn't also you. That habit of endlessly repeating "CELTA is a good first step" is a bit weird, though. Are you a bit autistic or something? If your online behaviour is anything to go by I'd hate to be a student in one of your classes, assuming you can find anyone to give you a teaching job.

Anyway, good news about the unpaid wages. Just makes me wonder how much of the rest we can expect to get, and when, and also what there is left in the way of assets to liquidate. The letter said something about legal actions filed in order to recover assets - which assets, and who from?

All of you getting this extra 20% salary need to understand how bloody hard it was to arrange this deal for all of you. The Union made this happen. Now it is time for all of you to pay your union dues. The NUT has always fought for your rights. Join us.

No it isn't! In Japan having non Japanese features a mouth that has the ability to spew out English in native like fashion and also the ability to ask up to 1 million inane robotic like questions in order to force the Japanese Student to utter a single word response. then after that you need the skill of clapping a smiling while shouting sugoi!sugoi! For their token grunt or yes no response.
That's all you need here in the land of the rising sun!

What a load of ignorant, patronising bollocks. There are plenty of Japanese people with more than enough English ability to get by in most common situations, even if the Japanese system of English education is completely shitty. I doubt if any of the best Japanese English speakers could make much sense of your first sentence though, because it's totally incomprehensible gibberish.

IF you can not understand my first sentence then perhaps you were educated through the Japanese Education System and now it all seems like double dutch to you!!!!!!

It is a fact that the main motivation for Japanese students to learn English is to get a result that will allow them to enter a university. Sure there are many Japanese who can speak English well, but from my experience they are very far and few between and after 6-8 years of learning a language, one should be able to string a basic sentence together. Hope you can comprehend this, if not keep on trying. If you are an Eikawa Teacher you probably go home feeling disilusioned as to how little impact you actually have here in the land of the rising sun, as well as the feeling of despair when you think of that class tomorrow and you first student who has done the 6-8 years of English study asks you "What he/she Name?" Stop being so self rightious and be more realistic! Please!!!!!

I had quite a job understanding the above sentence myself. However, after thinking about it I suppose that all that is missing is those conveniet commas:

In Japan [ comma] having non Japanese features [comma] a mouth that has the ability to spew out English in native [parenthesis] like fashion and also the ability to utter a million robot [parenthesis] like questions in order to force the Japanese student to utter a single word response. [umm where's the verb]. Then, after that, you need the skill of clapping AND smiling WHILE shouting 'Sugoi! Sugoi!' , for their token grunt response.

That is what is meant I guess. Normally, I am the last to complain about writing mistakes. However, if there are enough of them then it really does become quite difficult to work out what is being said.

I wouldn't equate the Japanese and Japan to working for an eikaiwa if I were you. It's a bigger country than that.

It is a fact that the main motivation for Japanese students to learn English is to get a result that will allow them to enter a university. Sure there are many Japanese who can speak English well, but from my experience they are very far and few between and after 6-8 years of learning a language, one should be able to string a basic sentence together.

Didn't read my post very carefully, did you? Which part of "the Japanese education system is completely shitty" didn't you understand? Also, you say first there are "many" Japanese people who can speak English well and then you add they're "few and far between?" Contradicting yourself there a bit, I think.

On the Japanese Education system: I'm not defending it, but imagine for a moment, if you will that the study of Japanese was made a compulsory school subject for everyone living in America for a five year period. If that happened, I can well imagine the nightmare stories some of the poor Japanese native speakers who were coopted into helping with this exercise would have to tell. The reactions in some quarters would be horrendous to behold.

Now imagine that the same Japanese teachers came to the task armed with little experience in teaching and were simply give a handipack of games and gimmicks and told they were expected to jump up and down like a monkey or performing bear and 'be genki'. How, do you think that would improve thier chances of survival in the classrooms of America?

Weak as the Japanese may be in their efforts to learn English- and they are truly weak - they have nevertheless come further in their national language learning project than America, Britain etc. could ever hope to with the educational systems that they have.

Please Mr X if you can not take peole replying to your comments, maybe you should not join a forum that encourages debate. You are just splitting hairs with my choice of words. I think many (or should I say a lot or should I give the exact number) of people on this site understood what I mean. Please, continue to pick a snippit from posters comments and try to at least add to the debate instead of just nit pick for your own self rightious exsistance on this site. Ps You seem to know everything about everything.

The American way of teaching it would be active, unlike the way Japanese learn English, which is passive in or out of the classroom. The objective of learning the language would not only be to enter university but a much longer term goal.

Sure the people would struggle with it but I am sure if the American Government threw as much money at it as the Japanese Government does then they would want results for their dollars. The teachers would most likely speak fluent Japanese in the classroom and commnicate to the ALT if there was one. Not like some prefectures here.

They would soon work out that making a language compulsory is one of the biggest mistakes that can be made in teaching language and would probably encourage students to learn other languages therefore the students who have an interest or investment would be motivated annd more likely to succeed, unlike Japnese students of past and present.

You mean if they threw the same amount of dollars that they threw at the 'No child left behind' project, that they would make sure they got results? Dream on my friend. Americans know all about wasting taxpayer money on education.

So Maths should not be a compulsory subject in a American schools right? People should just be able to choose if they want to learn math or not? Every system has its compulsory subjects, but not every system can get results with them - especially in the case of American schools.

It depends, I think on the nature of the passivity and also on the nature of the activity. Passive learning systems of the right type can be highly effective, as can active learning systems. Neither are mutually exclusive of the other and ideally there should probably a combination of both in order to maximally engage all learners.

For example, one of the most promising types of language teaching happening in America today is an input, comprehension based learning system practiced by a growing number of teachers under the banner TPRS. This system is directly contradictory to the output based 'communication' method that is in vogue today. If Japan were to try that, they might start getting somewhere.

Please Mr X if you can not take peole replying to your comments, maybe you should not join a forum that encourages debate.

You got all annoyed when I replied to your comment, didn't you?

You are just splitting hairs with my choice of words. I think many (or should I say a lot or should I give the exact number) of people on this site understood what I mean. Please, continue to pick a snippit from posters comments and try to at least add to the debate instead of just nit pick for your own self rightious exsistance on this site.

I just think it's funny that you think you have the right to criticise Japanese people for saying things like "What he/she Name?" when you say there are many and few Japanese people with strong English skills in the same sentence. You set yourself up for your comments to be nitpicked.

Ps You seem to know everything about everything.

Do I? Nice of you to say so. Or did you mean, "You seem to think you know everything about everything?" Reads a bit more insultingly that way, which I assume was your intention?

Sorry. No more off-topic language nazi stuff. Promise. I'll just add that I've met and spoken to enough really strong Japanese English speakers to form the opinion that they are not few and far between, whatever the numerous failings of the methods used to teach English at school and university here. I mean, my French is probably worse than a lot of Japanese people's English, and that's more my fault than the way I was taught.

But this is all veering wildly off topic. I assume no one else has any more news about the possibility of receiving more of the unpaid wages, or details of the court cases underway to squeeze more money out of various people? I'd love the trustees to go after Saruhashi and take him for whatever he's got left, although I can't see it happening.

Its mostly 2 or 3 idiots I believe. Some people actually use this thread to get and exchange information about large sums of money we are owed.. Why dont you guys bugger off and let us focus on our money?

Its mostly 2 or 3 idiots I believe. Some people actually use this thread to get and exchange information about large sums of money we are owed.. Why dont you guys bugger off and let us focus on our money?

Very fair point. But is there much more information to actually exchange at the moment? NOVA teachers are due to get 20% of what they're still owed, and hopefully more later. This is a good thing. Is there anything else to add?

I am so with you Dirty Nelly. We celebrate the day the work got done, and we closed that place, once and for all. We did good. We did real good. Nova is no more. We love that fact. We love the end of GEOS. We will never stop doing our work, until it is all done. We feel so happy, honestly, it is almost time for a little ditty, I think. Oh, I am too happy. I want to go to the bar. I am out of here. Will send my little ditty through later. Yes, we celebrate, the End of NOVA. Yes. The End. Thank God. The End. Yes. We celebrate the End of Nova.

The problem may not be with where you live, but it may depend on the situation when you were working for Nova. For example, if you were enrolled in Shakai Hoken, then the trustees have to take out the payments that would have been made to Shakai Hoken, and perhaps if your colluague was not enrolled, then he or she would not have to pay that amount. Also, it would depend on how much the total outstanding amount is. For example, some people's total unpaid by Nova may be worth two paychecks, some more, some less, depending on when they started working, how many months Nova failed to pay them, and your salary at the time. Individual amounts might also take into effect any days you would have missed from work before they closed their doors (and may even include anyone who decided not to show up to work because Nova was late with pay, or the informal strikes, if you will).

Other than that, I don't believe there should be any "overseas tax" because unlike the situation where some people received only about 60% from the government reimbursements because they left Japan, this is money coming from the company (the remains of the company, anyway) as if it were part of a paycheck and so it should not be subject to any tax but Japanese income tax.

Thanks for those suggestions but none of those things really apply. I know of at least 4 ex NOVA friends who are in line for a 90K repayment while I am getting 30K. We were all in the same situation at the time in terms of wage and all worked right up until the day of closure. We all got an initial payment of around 500K a couple of years back. Any differences we do have should surely amount to far less than 60K.

I appreciate that the difference has nothing to do with current location as I now know of people in the UK getting 90K.

Thing is, 30K actually sounds like the right amount to me but I am just a bit curious as to the massive difference and if I'm honest a little jealous!

Is anyone else having this problem? I've tried faxing three or four times from the states using the 011-81-6-6360-6766 and it never goes through. It just rings and rings. I've tried calling the offices too with no luck

I have faxed nova with my new address several times, also have given them my phone number and email. They have not sent me anything...does anyone know a phone number or any way I can get in touch with an actual person to find out what is going on?

If you send by international courier (EMS is the cheapest), then they will officially record and notify, by their on-line tracking system, that delivery was made, and who actually signed for it. Most post-offices are agents for EMS (who simply subcontract their work to DHL, but charge half the price of DHL).

That way, at least you have an official legal record, and they then cannot deny receipt.

Just found out about this payout a few days ago and faxed/mailed my contact info, former and new address etc. Though I missed out on the first payout, is there a chance I could get something in future payouts? Anyone on here in a similar situation and have any insight? Thanks in advance...